Sculpt Your Own Future
The wonderful thing about being a human being is that you are free to shape and sculpt your own character. You can make new choices and decisions at any time of life, especially with regard to your values, and begin acting as if you had those values already.
Perhaps the measure essence of happiness is your ability to achieve the three common goals of self-respect, self-esteem that everyone wants. It is only when you have these two in sufficient quantities that you feel really good about yourself. Let me talk about each of them in turn.
E. M. Forester, the great English author of The Horatio Hornblower series once wrote that, “I write to earn the respect of the people I respect.”
This is a wonderful observation. Probably everything that you do in life, to some extent, is to earn and keep the respect of the people you respect.
Respect of Your Parents
The first benefit of success mentioned by most of the respondents to the survey was they felt they had earned the respect of their parents. The second benefit was that they felt they had earned the respect of their spouses. The third benefit was they felt that they had earned the respect of their peers and colleagues in their fields. Fourth, they said they felt they had made an important contribution to the lives of others, thereby earning the respect of people in the public at large. In every case, earning and keeping the respect of others was considered a major benefit of having lived a good life and accomplished worthwhile things.
Here’s a Key Question for You
Who are the people in your life that you respect the most? Who are the people whose respect for you is the most important? The very act of identifying the people who you most respect, and then determining how you would need to behave to earn their respect is a turning point for many people.
As a matter of fact, if you change the people that you associate with, you often change the behaviors that are most important to you and to them. If you associate with people with high standards, you begin to raise your standards to their level and become a better person at the same time.
Self-Esteem
The second ingredient of happiness is self-esteem. Self-esteem, how you feel about yourself, is the foundation quality of a happy, highly-effective, high-performance personality. Let me explain.
Your self-concept, the core of your being, which determines how you relate to every part of your life and your world, is made up of three ingredients. The first is your self-ideal. This is the combination of qualities, virtues, behaviors, characteristics and qualities that you most admire in yourself and others. Your self-ideal is your directional mechanism. It largely determines where you go with your life and most of the major decisions that you make.
We know that successful people have very clear self-ideals. They know what they believe in and what they stand for. They have very clear virtues and values that they have thought through for themselves. And most of all, they don’t compromise their fundamental values or principles for anyone or anything. Men and women with high self-ideals, which they refuse to compromise, are the leaders and the role models in our societies. They usually rise to the top of great organizations. They are our ideals of what an excellent human being can be.
Throughout history, the men and women who have had the highest ideals and values, the deepest convictions, from which they have refused to budge, have been the most admired people in all societies.
The second part of your self-concept is your self-image. Your self-image is defined as the way you see yourself and think about yourself in the present, in the “now.” How you see yourself largely determines how you perform in any situation.
Men and women with positive self-images tend to be positive, confident people. If you have a positive self-image of yourself as a manager, as a salesperson, as a parent or even as a personality in your interactions with others, whenever you are in one of these situations, you will perform well.
One of the great breakthroughs in psychology in the 20th century is our discovery that you can change your performance by changing your mental pictures. In fact, all improvement in your life begins with an improvement in the way you see yourself and think about yourself on a minute-to-minute basis. If you take a few moments prior to any event or situation and create a clear mental picture of yourself performing at your best, you will always tend to perform better in that situation than if you neglected to do it.
Your self-esteem is largely determined by how close your current performance is to your self-ideal, for example, if you think that you are a good salesperson and you make an excellent sales call which results in strong forward movement in the account, or even a sale, you feel terrific about yourself. You feel like a winner. You feel happy. This happens because you have a deep down feeling that you are moving toward becoming more and more like the person that you most ideally want to be. This is why it is so important for you to have clear ideals in the first place.
The third part of your self-concept is your self-esteem. This is how you feel about yourself. This is how much you consider yourself to be a valuable and worthwhile person. And your self-esteem is largely determined, as I just said, by the degree to which you feel your present performance your self-image is moving toward being consistent with your idea of perfect performance, your self-ideal.
Your self-esteem is the most important part of your personality, and it is only when you are living up to the very best within yourself that you enjoy high self-esteem. It is only when you have high self-esteem that you are truly happy.
The Law of Correspondence
Perhaps the most important discovery of all the mental laws of history is the Law of Correspondence. This says that your outer world will eventually become a reflection of your inner world. It says that if you have an inner world of very high, admirable values and qualities that you adhere to and refuse to compromise, your outer world will soon conform to those values and qualities. The Law of Correspondence explains the Law of Attraction. The Law of Attraction says that you will inevitably attract into your life the people, ideas, circumstances and resources necessary for you to achieve your dominant thoughts and desires.
When you become a thoroughly good person, with high and admiral able traits and qualities, you will attract good people and situations into your life. You will see your outer world correspond to or reflect back your inner world in every respect.
The glue that holds relationships together is trust. And trust is always based on the quality of character that you are known for among the people around you.
Here are four questions to help you to develop a personal code of ethics that can help you to become a better and better person in the months and years ahead. The first question is this, “What kind of a world would my world be, if everyone in it was just like me?” The second question is, “What kind of a country would my country be, if everyone in it was just like me?” The third question is, “What kind of a company would my company be, if everyone in it was just like me?” And the fourth question is, “What kind of a family would my family be, if everyone in it was just like me?”
If you are being completely honest with yourself, and personal honesty begins with personal objectivity, you will probably find that you have some areas where you could improve in one or more of the answers to those questions. The superior person always evaluates his own personal behavior by asking what the world, his country, his company and his family would be like if everyone did exactly the same things he did, in every respect.
When you ask yourself these questions if you’re honest with yourself, you realize that you have a lot of work to do. Your next step is to determine the kind of values that you would have if you could answer affirmatively to every one of those questions. What kind of a person would you be? What kind of qualities and characteristics would you have? How would you behave in your day-to-day interactions with other people if your conduct and behavior were so exemplary that, if everyone adopted it, this would be a much better world in which to live.
The development of a personal code and a personal philosophy of life is one of the most important things you ever do. Your personal values and the virtues that you most admire and believe in form the core of your mission or purpose in life. Your purpose, mission, values and vision for yourself then determine your motivations, your attitudes, your expectations and ultimately, your behavior. This inner core, this personal code that you establish, ultimately determines everything you are and everything you become.
So decide today to define your own personal values clearly. Remember, you are the primary creative force in your own life. You are the architect of your own destiny. You are the captain of your soul and the master of your fate. You can become an outstanding human being by deciding to do so, and then by defining for yourself, how an outstanding human being would think, act and behave in every respect. Then, you simply discipline yourself, every hour, every minute of every day, to be that kind of a person.
The most important quality in the development of human character is, and always has been, self-discipline. This is your ability to make yourself do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not. It is your ability to determine the values and principles that make up your own personal code and then to stick to those values and principles, no matter what the temptation is to do otherwise.
Everything you are and everything you become is determined by your choices and decisions. And your choices and decisions about what you believe in and what you stand for are at the heart of everything you are or ever will be. When you make a firm, unequivocal decision, in a world of rapid change, to stand up for certain principles and values, and to never compromise them, you put yourself onto the high road to becoming an outstanding individual. And when you become an outstanding individual, your future will be unlimited.
The wonderful thing about being a human being is that you are free to shape and sculpt your own character. You can make new choices and decisions at any time of life, especially with regard to your values, and begin acting as if you had those values already.
Perhaps the measure essence of happiness is your ability to achieve the three common goals of self-respect, self-esteem that everyone wants. It is only when you have these two in sufficient quantities that you feel really good about yourself. Let me talk about each of them in turn.
E. M. Forester, the great English author of The Horatio Hornblower series once wrote that, “I write to earn the respect of the people I respect.”
This is a wonderful observation. Probably everything that you do in life, to some extent, is to earn and keep the respect of the people you respect.
Respect of Your Parents
The first benefit of success mentioned by most of the respondents to the survey was they felt they had earned the respect of their parents. The second benefit was that they felt they had earned the respect of their spouses. The third benefit was they felt that they had earned the respect of their peers and colleagues in their fields. Fourth, they said they felt they had made an important contribution to the lives of others, thereby earning the respect of people in the public at large. In every case, earning and keeping the respect of others was considered a major benefit of having lived a good life and accomplished worthwhile things.
Here’s a Key Question for You
Who are the people in your life that you respect the most? Who are the people whose respect for you is the most important? The very act of identifying the people who you most respect, and then determining how you would need to behave to earn their respect is a turning point for many people.
As a matter of fact, if you change the people that you associate with, you often change the behaviors that are most important to you and to them. If you associate with people with high standards, you begin to raise your standards to their level and become a better person at the same time.
Self-Esteem
The second ingredient of happiness is self-esteem. Self-esteem, how you feel about yourself, is the foundation quality of a happy, highly-effective, high-performance personality. Let me explain.
Your self-concept, the core of your being, which determines how you relate to every part of your life and your world, is made up of three ingredients. The first is your self-ideal. This is the combination of qualities, virtues, behaviors, characteristics and qualities that you most admire in yourself and others. Your self-ideal is your directional mechanism. It largely determines where you go with your life and most of the major decisions that you make.
We know that successful people have very clear self-ideals. They know what they believe in and what they stand for. They have very clear virtues and values that they have thought through for themselves. And most of all, they don’t compromise their fundamental values or principles for anyone or anything. Men and women with high self-ideals, which they refuse to compromise, are the leaders and the role models in our societies. They usually rise to the top of great organizations. They are our ideals of what an excellent human being can be.
Throughout history, the men and women who have had the highest ideals and values, the deepest convictions, from which they have refused to budge, have been the most admired people in all societies.
The second part of your self-concept is your self-image. Your self-image is defined as the way you see yourself and think about yourself in the present, in the “now.” How you see yourself largely determines how you perform in any situation.
Men and women with positive self-images tend to be positive, confident people. If you have a positive self-image of yourself as a manager, as a salesperson, as a parent or even as a personality in your interactions with others, whenever you are in one of these situations, you will perform well.
One of the great breakthroughs in psychology in the 20th century is our discovery that you can change your performance by changing your mental pictures. In fact, all improvement in your life begins with an improvement in the way you see yourself and think about yourself on a minute-to-minute basis. If you take a few moments prior to any event or situation and create a clear mental picture of yourself performing at your best, you will always tend to perform better in that situation than if you neglected to do it.
Your self-esteem is largely determined by how close your current performance is to your self-ideal, for example, if you think that you are a good salesperson and you make an excellent sales call which results in strong forward movement in the account, or even a sale, you feel terrific about yourself. You feel like a winner. You feel happy. This happens because you have a deep down feeling that you are moving toward becoming more and more like the person that you most ideally want to be. This is why it is so important for you to have clear ideals in the first place.
The third part of your self-concept is your self-esteem. This is how you feel about yourself. This is how much you consider yourself to be a valuable and worthwhile person. And your self-esteem is largely determined, as I just said, by the degree to which you feel your present performance your self-image is moving toward being consistent with your idea of perfect performance, your self-ideal.
Your self-esteem is the most important part of your personality, and it is only when you are living up to the very best within yourself that you enjoy high self-esteem. It is only when you have high self-esteem that you are truly happy.
The Law of Correspondence
Perhaps the most important discovery of all the mental laws of history is the Law of Correspondence. This says that your outer world will eventually become a reflection of your inner world. It says that if you have an inner world of very high, admirable values and qualities that you adhere to and refuse to compromise, your outer world will soon conform to those values and qualities. The Law of Correspondence explains the Law of Attraction. The Law of Attraction says that you will inevitably attract into your life the people, ideas, circumstances and resources necessary for you to achieve your dominant thoughts and desires.
When you become a thoroughly good person, with high and admiral able traits and qualities, you will attract good people and situations into your life. You will see your outer world correspond to or reflect back your inner world in every respect.
The glue that holds relationships together is trust. And trust is always based on the quality of character that you are known for among the people around you.
Here are four questions to help you to develop a personal code of ethics that can help you to become a better and better person in the months and years ahead. The first question is this, “What kind of a world would my world be, if everyone in it was just like me?” The second question is, “What kind of a country would my country be, if everyone in it was just like me?” The third question is, “What kind of a company would my company be, if everyone in it was just like me?” And the fourth question is, “What kind of a family would my family be, if everyone in it was just like me?”
If you are being completely honest with yourself, and personal honesty begins with personal objectivity, you will probably find that you have some areas where you could improve in one or more of the answers to those questions. The superior person always evaluates his own personal behavior by asking what the world, his country, his company and his family would be like if everyone did exactly the same things he did, in every respect.
When you ask yourself these questions if you’re honest with yourself, you realize that you have a lot of work to do. Your next step is to determine the kind of values that you would have if you could answer affirmatively to every one of those questions. What kind of a person would you be? What kind of qualities and characteristics would you have? How would you behave in your day-to-day interactions with other people if your conduct and behavior were so exemplary that, if everyone adopted it, this would be a much better world in which to live.
The development of a personal code and a personal philosophy of life is one of the most important things you ever do. Your personal values and the virtues that you most admire and believe in form the core of your mission or purpose in life. Your purpose, mission, values and vision for yourself then determine your motivations, your attitudes, your expectations and ultimately, your behavior. This inner core, this personal code that you establish, ultimately determines everything you are and everything you become.
So decide today to define your own personal values clearly. Remember, you are the primary creative force in your own life. You are the architect of your own destiny. You are the captain of your soul and the master of your fate. You can become an outstanding human being by deciding to do so, and then by defining for yourself, how an outstanding human being would think, act and behave in every respect. Then, you simply discipline yourself, every hour, every minute of every day, to be that kind of a person.
The most important quality in the development of human character is, and always has been, self-discipline. This is your ability to make yourself do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not. It is your ability to determine the values and principles that make up your own personal code and then to stick to those values and principles, no matter what the temptation is to do otherwise.
Everything you are and everything you become is determined by your choices and decisions. And your choices and decisions about what you believe in and what you stand for are at the heart of everything you are or ever will be. When you make a firm, unequivocal decision, in a world of rapid change, to stand up for certain principles and values, and to never compromise them, you put yourself onto the high road to becoming an outstanding individual. And when you become an outstanding individual, your future will be unlimited.